Chun-Li's bouncy breasts baffle Street Fighter fans at E3
Lauren O'Neil | CBC News | Posted: June 17, 2015 10:22 PM | Last Updated: June 19, 2015
Fighter's 'breast physics' in clip of forthcoming Street Fighter V game has fans rolling their eyes
New footage of game play from Capcom's highly anticipated Street Fighter V was unveiled during an E3 live stream this week, giving fans a fresh look at some of the franchise's most popular characters in action.
And yet, excited as they were, the action proved a bit too much for some viewers — particularly in the region of Chun-Li's chest.
More than 22 million people have tuned in to Capcom's Twitch channel to watch Street Fighter V being played live at E3 since the gaming expo kicked off.
While Sony's announcement of two more fighters (Cammy and Birdie) to the forthcoming game's roster on Monday attracted plenty of attention, it was Street Fighter's first-ever female character and longtime fan favourite Chun-Li that got the internet talking once again.
It's not unusual for the appearances of female video game characters to spark controversy, or for the size of their breasts to grow over time.
This is likely why few online seemed surprised by the actual size of Chun-Li's breasts in Street Fighter V.
What freaked out the fans was a GIF posted to Reddit on Tuesday that shows her breasts bouncing ferociously as she prepares to fight an opponent (the only other female character announced for Street Fighter V so far.)
The GIF spread fast online Wednesday, prompting many on Twitter to call Chun-Li's jiggling chest "absurd," "creepy" and Jell-O-like among other things.
"Saw Street Fighter V has ridiculous jiggle physics," wrote one user, referring to a game-development technique meant to make breasts look more realistic. "Really knuckling down on that grossness, huh Capcom?"
"Those 'jiggle' physics on Chun-Li's boobs are just dumb," wrote another. "They're not even jiggling they're basically just flying around."
Jiggle physics, or "breast physics," have been notoriously difficult for game developers to master according to Kotaku.
"If you've played games that have breast physics, you've probably seen how uncommon it is for games to show breasts that move like what they actually are: bags of fat affected by gravity," wrote Patricia Hernandez in an explainer on the term earlier this year. "Instead, it's more likely for a game to depict breasts as helium balloons that have minds of their own."
That's not what happened with Chun-Li, though, according to Capcom.
Peter Rosas, an associate producer for the company, spoke about the backlash to gaming commentator James Chen during a Twitch broadcast on Wednesday afternoon.
"The whole Chun-Li jiggle thing is a glitch that only happens on the second player side of the E3 build and it will be fixed," he said.
As the above tweets demonstrate, some remain unconvinced that the jiggle wasn't intentional. Yet, as Kotaku points out, there are plenty of other game play videos online that show Chun-Li in Street Fighter V without "gravity defying boobs from the nth dimension," as one Twitter user put it.
Sadly for Street Fighter fans, we likely will not know what the finished version of the character looks like until the PlayStation Network starts providing players with beta access on July 23.
The full version of the game is set to be available for PlayStation 4 and PC in March 2016.